The powers of persuasion and oleaginous charm that got Prime Minister Justin Trudeau elected have certainly been squandered so far in the arena of combating greenhouse gas emissions.

Could he not at least stand up in the media and use the “bully pulpit” (Teddy Roosevelt’s term, “bully” in the sense of “superb”, “wonderful”) to encourage Canadians to reduce their profligate consumption and production of dirty energy for the sake of saving the atmosphere?

Canadians would, I think, respond to such a project enthusiastically. We would turn down our thermostats, drive less, insulate and engage subsidized clean energy technologies. We would understand and endure if the economy suffered temporarily during the transitions required. We would step up and sacrifice for future generations, as we have in the past. Such a major national program should be tracked by celebratory quarterly reports on our progress.

Absent this simple leadership, recent decisions lead us to conclude that the federal government’s real agenda is preserving the destructive status quo in the fossil energy sector for short-term gain and long-term loss. This is tragic.

Dr. Jacques Chaoulli, who won the landmark Supreme Court decision allowing access to private medical care in Quebec, is quoted to the effect that the opponents of private care are motivated by ideology. Somehow, he does not seem to understand that his own belief in free market access to medical care can itself be described as ideology. His quoted description of the Canadian government as fascist certainly calls into question his own judgment. No one so far has demonstrated beyond pure speculation that privileged access to private care for the well-off will do anything to improve access for the average Canadian.

Michel Facon, Vancouver

Child pornography laws absurd

Re: When porn laws hurt children, Oct. 8

Why was a B.C. teenager jailed over a topless picture of a girl from his school, when public top-freedom for females, without regard to age, has been legal in the province since 2000?

Although over the past few years our society has slowly come to accept that simple nudity of adults is not pornographic, we have simultaneously concluded the polar opposite about children’s nudity, which was until recently considered innocent. By declaring a witch-hunt against naked children, we have painted ourselves into a corner from where we are essentially forced into the absurd overkill of treating so-called “sexting” teenagers as child pornographers — which has been rightly likened to finding two children playing a consensual game of doctor and charging both with child sex abuse.

Aleppo is not the only place where war crimes are being committed. Last week, a funeral home in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, was bombed and 140 people were killed and 525 were injured. Saudi Arabia cannot beat the “rebels” in Yemen with ground attacks, so it is bombing hospitals, schools, and police stations while blockading the country and trying to starve the population.

Canada supplies armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia, little different from the ones Saudi Arabia used to suppress the people of Bahrain in 2012, and which they use to suppress the Shiites in their country. Canada also supplies weapons to Saudi Arabia, made in Winnipeg, photos of which were made public by Yemeni forces that captured them. Also, most recently it became known Canadian web filtering software made by Net Sweeper is being used in Bahrain to stifle dissent. The country’s political opposition group has been shut down and the founder of Bahrain’s Centre for Human Rights arrested.

It should be a crime for a Canadian company to supply Saudi Arabia materials that can be used in the commissioning of their war crimes.

Edward Zak, Nakusp

Water give-away questioned

B.C. citizens are selling 1,000,000 litres of water for little more than a toonie to Nestlé, which then sells it for up to a toonie per litre. Does this help lower our tax base, pave roads or improve health care?

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